Digital Movies and The Big Screen

Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has an extensive article [free reg req] about the move from film, invented in the 19th century, to digital cameras and projection in the movie business. It sounds like the shift is building a lot of momentum, with a nice push from George Lucas' decision to shoot Episode II of Star Wars entirely using digital cameras. The article covers both the technological developments making it possible as well as the business alliances. One neat detail is that if a distribution system based on streaming (instead of data on DVDs, for example) is set up, theaters could show things like live concerts or other performances as they happen. Sounds great to me." Rather neat the impact that George Lucas is making in this area by filming episode II all digital. Could theaters gain back with exclusivity some of what they've lost to Blockbuster and NetFlix? And how soon till the equivalent of soundboard recordings are squished onto MP4 before the credits are through?

Comments

I hate this

[Apotsy]

You know, ten years ago, I used to be able to go see movies projected in 70mm with six-channel analog sound.

Now we have 35mm-only, with 5-channel compressed digital sound.

Soon, we'll be moving to HDTV. Yes, that's right, HDTV. That's what Lucas is using for SW Ep. II. He's using a Sony HDTV camera that captures images at 1920x1080, cropped to about 1920x800 to form a widescreen 2.39:1 "scope" image. (Compare that with the resolution of 35mm film, which is equivalent to about 4000x3000 for an anamorphically squeezed "scope" image.) Add to that the fact that the color and contrast ranges of HDTV are smaller than that of film, and you've got a nice step down (yes, down) in picture quality.

Also note that the DLP projectors built by TI are only 1280x1024, so you won't even get to see the full HDTV image if you go see this movie in a theater with digital projection.

All told, this is yet another reduction in quality for theatrical presentations. What's there to be excited about?

Re:I hate this

[Thagg]

It's true that Lucas is using a HDTV-resolution camera, but it is a special-built Panavision 24fps digital camera at HDTV resolution. HDTV resolution is good enough; almost every digital visual effects shot that you see on film today is scanned, calculated, and filmed out at 2048 pixels, just barely more than HDTV resolution, and the resolution isn't an issue. The exceptions are for things like starfields and credits; with super-sharp high-contrast features.

The TI DLP projectors are prototypes, and while they are indeed 1280x1024, the production ones will be 1920 pixels across. Even so, my digital film effects company went to see Mission to Mars on a digital screen, sitting in the fourth row of a huge screen, and only two of us noticed that it was digital.

Contrast and brightness are issues, and TI is working on them. Still, they are not issues for the huge majority of the viewing public. The striking quality advantages of digital -- no weave, no scratches, no projector changes, consistent vibrant color, and all the rest are true advances; and once the contrast, brightness, and resolution are improved it will be better in almost every respect.

The freedom to tweak the digital negative, which is part of the digital cinema paradigm, is a great deal. On film you have only the most ham-handed ways of adjusting color balance and brightness of a scene (and no way to adjust contrast or hue). Directors and cinematographers will gain tremendous abilities with digital negative.

I really like this. It's going to change my business in a hundred different ways; some bad, most good. The biggest change for us will be that we'll get to (ok, we'll have to!) work up until the very last day before a film is released -- right now it takes a couple of weeks to make prints and distribute them to the theater. I'm positive that some movies will take even longer; that some shots will change from Friday to Saturday, or the first weekend to the second, as last-second shots get added or audiences weigh in on the first screenings.

thad

Money, not quality

[GrouchoMarx]

The industry isn't moving to digital because of increased quality, whatever the pundits say. They're moving to digital because it's (A) easier (B) faster (C) cheaper.

(A) Remember, live actor footage for SW Ep. II has already been completed. It's long over. Lucas (and company) are spending the next year or two on post-production and effects. For analog film, how do you add in laser blasts, matte shots, lightsaber blades, and other fun stuff? The traditional way involves someone sitting down on the film with a very expensive crayola marker, while the more modern version involves transfering the footage to a computer, doing it digitally, and then spooling it back out. Either way is substantially more difficult than just taking it digital all the way through. It's the same issue as with analog vs. digital LCD monitors. The digital ones have fewer steps, so they are faster, cheaper, and have better pictures.

(B) It takes time to paint in all of those blasters/phasers/lasers. And it takes even more time to piece together all of the various scenes, especially when each scene exists in seven different pieces. Remember the brief shot in the original Star Wars, where Luke is practicing with his lightsaber against the robot ball while Chewie and the droids are playing chess in the background? That shot contained over five different "layers" that had to be put together and synched, and then all alligned with the rest of the footage. That takes a fraction as much time to do when it's all in Adobe Premier (or whatever program LucasFilm uses) than when it's all on celluloid rolls.

(C) Time is money, or so say the beancounters. The time you save by doing development and post production digitally will translate into less money you have to pay your post-production people (good for the studio, bad for the post-production people, which means the major studios will go with it every time), which means higher net profit. In addition, chemical film costs a lot of money. So does the development cost. And then you need the storage space to archive all of it until the movie is finished, and sometimes even then you keep all the bits and pieces. (Lucas did for the original trilogy, which is why they were able to do the Special Edition release.) Digital equipment is not cheap, but once you have your cameras and a few (dozen) DV tapes, you're set. All you need for storage then is a ton of hard disk space, which is now going for a song. You then have perfect reproduction copies of all your footage, and you can reuse the tapes for the next scene, or the next movie. Over the long run, that brings the cost of production down substantially, just as digital still cameras do compared to 35mm film cameras, even if the quality isn't quite as good yet.

We can argue until we're blue in the face about whether the quality of digital film (that's a fairly big misnomer, isn't it?) is noticibly poorer or better than traditional film. But to a studio, quality is irrelevant. (Just look at some of the stuff coming out in theaters.) Time, money, and simplicity are what they work on, and in all three of those categories digital video wins hands down. I expect that for art films and movies without many FX, traditional film or even the "enhansed" film we're starting to see will continue for a long time. But for anything requiring substantial FX or post-production, digital is going to take over, whether we like it or not.

--GrouchoMarx
My other account is CmdrTaco

--GrouchoMarx